Mark Twain is the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who was born November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, the youngest of six children. The family eventually moved to nearby Hannibal, Missouri, which Twain later described as an ideal place for a boy to grow up. When he was eleven years old, his father died, and Twain was made to find work in order to help support the family. At thirteen, he ended his formal education and became a full time printer's apprentice, an experience that formed the basis of the print shop described in his posthumously published story "No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger."

During the early 1850s, Twain worked intermittently for various newspapers founded by his brother Orion, and traveled throughout the United States, contributing humorous travel sketches to popular periodicals. In 1856, Twain met the riverboat pilot Horace Bixby, who inspired him to learn to pilot steamboats traveling...